


The Scorpion and the Crane

by Mynameisdoubleg



Category: BattleTech: MechWarrior, Classic Battletech (Tabletop RPG)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:41:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29859627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mynameisdoubleg/pseuds/Mynameisdoubleg
Summary: Can soldiers on opposite sides of an ancient feud learn to ignore foolish orders from their leaders and work together instead -- and will they remember those lessons once it is it their turn to lead?





	The Scorpion and the Crane

_Marble Country_

_Devil’s Rock_

_Federated Commonwealth_

_5 May, 3053_

Scuttlebutt said there was a Lyran ace out there. Hottest MechJock anybody had seen in a long, long time. Nobody knew who it was. Maybe a captured Clanner, maybe Allard-Liao, maybe a clone of the Black Widow or not even human at all, some kind of hyper-advanced AI. Depending on who you talked to, the ace had already taken out three, four, maybe five guys, just clean blasted their heads off with one shot each time. Got to be that units would start running when anybody spotted the ace’s crest—a white crane with outstretched wings.

“A scorpion’s got nothing to fear from a crane,” sniffed Jack Kopiona when he heard, with the confidence of youth, as unshakeable as it was unfounded. He pulled the chain of a silver necklace from his uniform, from which hung his family’s crest, a scorpion with tail raised, poised to strike. “Just let me give ‘em a taste of my sting.”

“That’s the spirit, Lieutenant Kopiona,” nodded the Colonel with approval. “Never forget lads, the Elsies are the enemy. They’ve cozied up to the Davion warmongers, stolen our worlds and won’t rest until they’ve brought the rest of us under their heel.”

In the middle of Marble Country stood the centuries-old ruins of Comet City, a misshapen lump of crumbling stone and steel and concrete, its roads cracked and overgrown with weeds, the drooping faces of its buildings now bearded with moss.

Jack led his lance cautiously through decaying and haphazard streets. In the cockpit of his BattleMech—a brand-new _Bandersnatch_ —he cycled through the sensors, fingers on the triggers of his war machine’s twin autocannon and battery of lasers.

The city filled him with foreboding—a dead place, abandoned over the centuries of endless warring and raiding. Its people driven away by the very war that was supposed to liberate them from the Hegemony, from the Amaris Empire, from the Commonwealth, from the League, from one side or the other. If only the soldiers had paused, looked around, and seen the destruction they were causing. But no, the Succession Wars had a kind of inexorable momentum of their own that ignored logic and reason and restraint.

“LT, contact, contact, grid—” Sergeant Hitch babbled excitedly, then there was a blare of static and the audio cut out.

“Fencer Two, come in Fencer Two,” Jack called, without much hope. He checked Hitch’s last position, swallowed hard and pushed in ’Mech forward. “Fencer Two, do you read?”

The MagRes scanner beeped at him, informing him of a contact. Something big, maybe 70-80 tons, as big as his own BattleMech. No visual—there was a half-collapsed 10-story car park in the way. Jack eased the _Bandersnatch_ around the corner with slow, deliberate steps. There, in the center of the road ahead of him, just 500 meters away, stood the hungry predator profile of a Federated Commonwealth _Falconer_. Painted on its side, just below the cockpit, was a brilliant white bird with a long neck and outstretched wings.

“Flagship Command, this is Fencer One,” Jack signaled the Captain. “Contact. It’s him—it’s the ace.”

“Fencer One, hold position. Reinforcements inbound.”

“Negative, sir,” Jack halted, facing the _Falconer_. The enemy BattleMech’s weapons tracked him, but did not fire. They were both still, in a stretching, taunt moment of wordless, mutual respect. “Leave him to me.”

“Lieutenant Kopiona, what in Thomas Marik’s own purple ass-feathers do you think you’re doing?” the Captain bawled over the company channel. “Pull back and wait for back up!”

“Can’t do that, Captain,” Jack said with a smile. “Everyone, leave the Crane to me. Let me take him one on one.” He ignored the Captain’s reply, shut down the comms and brought up his weapons. Took a deep breath. And fired.

At the same instant the _Falconer_ sprang to life, twisted aside with blinding speed, firing back with buzzing particle fire and the whoosh-crack of its gauss rifle.

The _Bandersnatch_ ’s twin LB autocannon thudded and roared, firing a burst of shrapnel rounds that detonating a few meters from the _Falconer_ and releasing a spray of armor-shredding sub-munitions, fanning out in a horizontal rain of razor-edged steel. Even though the _Falconer_ had dodged aside, it could not escape the disintegrating haze of metal that pitted armor and clawed at it everywhere along its left side from shoulder to foot.

Then Jack’s screen automatically blacked out as answering particle fire washed across the _Bandersnatch_ ’s head, sending a shower of sparks down on him as something blew out in the cockpit ceiling, making him jerk back on the control stick, probably saving his life as the air blurred and a gauss slug whooshed past and impacted on the car park behind him, blasting a geyser of concrete and steel across the road.

Jack yanked back on the throttle, scuttling his machine back around the corner of the car park, firing as he went, filling the road with white-trailed cones of shrapnel. Even though the two BattleMechs were equal in throw-weight, the _Falconer_ would eat his ‘Mech alive if he tried to engage at range. No, he’d have to stalk, ambush, use the terrain to cover his approach.

Jack circled around the car park, came out the other side, guns blazing—only to find the _Falconer_ had anticipated him. A gauss slug hammered into the _Bandersnatch_ ’s left leg just below the knee and almost sent him sprawling. He twisted back under cover again, swearing under his breath. The _Falconer_ ’s armor looked like the cratered surface of an especially old moon by now, but he hadn’t landed a penetrating blow.

He tried circling around—only for a proximity warning to scream as the _Falconer_ appeared in his rear arc. Jack desperately fired the twin lasers covering his rear arc, splashing fire around the _Falconer_ ’s cockpit, dropped his ’Mech to the ground in a roll as gauss and particle fire crackled overhead, found his feet, fired back, but the _Falconer_ was gone, finding cover of its own.

They twirled about one another, came together in a storm of green and blue and grey comet-tails, bright arcs that burned lines across the retina, then flew apart, wounded, leaking black lubricant, armor curled and peeling along jagged, yellow-orange scars. Stalk and ambush, back and forth, now he was the hunter, now he was the prey. Jack struck from the shell of an apartment block—the Falconer’s return fire sliced through the building’s pillars, nearly bringing it down on top of him. Meter-sized chunks of concrete rained down, smashing against his armor, denting and crumpling it.

The _Bandersnatch_ ’s left arm was gone, the shoulder trailing a nest of writhing wired and musculature where a gauss shot and torn the arm free. The _Falconer_ limped, melted armor spot-welded to its own actuators by the incredible heat of laser fire. Its gauss rifle had fallen silent, either damaged or out of ammunition.

It was an opening. A small one, but he’d take it. Jack circled around again, using his greater speed now, staying on the gauss rifle’s side, closing. He had the Crane cold now. Just a matter of time.

“Hold tight, Fencer One, the cavalry is here!” the Captain’s voice blared in his ears. “Deploy smoke to mark your position.”

Jack halted, a hundred meters from the Crane. Its wounded side in his crosshairs, his finger on the trigger. His HUD chirped and dotted the display with the blue markers of new and friendly contacts. The _Falconer_ slowly, almost painfully twisted towards him. The gold-tinted mirror surface of the enemy’s cockpit faced his, so close he could see his own ’Mech reflected in the surface.

“No,” Jack murmured to himself. No, not like this. He stepped back, lowered the remaining arm. And then his sensors pinged again, this time with red markers, three, no, five, six, now 10 approaching BattleMechs.

Jack smiled a little then. The Crane had hesitated for the same reason he had. They’d both known reinforcements were coming, both stayed their hands out of respect for their opponent. “Another time, then,” Jack said, and bowed the _Bandersnatch_ towards the Crane. The move was stiffly mimicked, and then the Falconer began to limp backwards. Jack watched it go.

They would meet again, he was sure.

_Woventhread Bend_

_Callison_

_Federated Commonwealth_

_9 September, 3057_

It was storm season on Callison. Under an oppressive, impenetrable and seemingly immovable black mantle of storm clouds, thunder and lightning and rain had pounded the plain nonstop for nearly a month. Bolt after bolt after bolt forked down, eye-searing pulses of light, startlingly bright in the perpetual twilight, filling the air with overlapping drum-beat of thunder, each note blurring into a constant, chaotic roar.

As though in imitation of this incredible fury, the ground below blazed with light and shook under concussive detonations. BattleMechs lurched from the gloom, briefly illuminated by each spasm of lightning, and spat multi-colored fire, keening laser beams, crackling particle bolts and hammering streams of autocannon shells at one another. Two decades after their humiliating retreat in the Fourth Succession War, the Free Worlds League had returned to Callison.

Captain Jack Kopiona wished they could’ve come back in at a slightly more temperate season. He’d worn a rain poncho in his dash from his _Bandersnatch_ to the battalion CP, for all the good it had done. Under the five minutes of fury the skies of Callison had unleashed on him, the poncho’s material proved not so much water-resistant as water-absorbent. If the League really wanted to end this rain, he thought glumly, all they needed to do was fly a few kites made of ponchos. They’d probably suck all the moisture out of the sky and turn the planet into a desert.

So Jack stood in a shivering, dripping puddle as the Force Commander rattled off the details of the current situation and plans for a new attack. The Woventhread River had burst its banks in half a dozen places, steadily flooding the fields along its course, along with the cities of Backstretch, Furlong and Woventhread Bend.

“Captain Kopiona,” the Force Commander was saying, “the flooding provides a unique opportunity to drive the enemy from this position. I want you to take your company upstream, here, to Breakwater Dam. Destroy the dam, and the Lyrans in the valley below will either be swept away or have to retreat.”

“But sir, what about the cities?” Jack protested. “Sir, we’re supposed to be liberating these people. This world was Free Worlds League for centuries. Those are our people down there, sir.”

“I appreciate that, really I do, Captain Kopiona. But the Colonel was quite clear that he wants this position taken today. Today, Captain. The General is on-planet too, and he’d going to be watching, so make us proud out there, Captain.”

“Sir,” Jack saluted absently. “Proud, sir? Yes. Of course, sir.”

As he led his company through the sucking, squelching mud towards the dam, Jack found himself thinking of Comet City, on Devil’s Rock. If he followed orders, if he blew the dam, the cities below would be swept away, destroyed, perhaps forever. He’d be making another handful of ghost towns, added to the ever-growing pile of waste and destruction these wars had caused.

The path took the company close to the Wonventhread River, before bending upstream, headed for the highlands and the great, curving arc of the dam. The river was already sloshing through the streets of Woventhread Bend, some houses already sunk up to their roofs. People were poling back and forth in rubber boats, canoes or skiffs, trying to rescue their neighbors from higher floors. Jack thought he could also see flickers of movement, FedCom BattleMechs taking up positions.

“Company, halt,” he ordered. “Wait here.”

Jack switched off his weapons and targeting system. Then marched down, towards the river. The water rose to the _Bandersnatch_ ’s ankles. He sloshed forward, waves rippling in his wake, floating debris bobbing sadly. He could see the FedCom BattleMechs now, a scattered line of scarecrow shadows in the rain.

At the center of the enemy line stood a _Falconer_. White crane painted on its side.

Jack drew a sharp breath, then shook his head, and slowly approached the Lyran battle line, his weapons offline, BattleMech’s hands raised. Someone shot at him. Red laser fire burned a line from neck to shoulder of the _Bandersnatch_. Jack halted, waited, and when nobody else fired, moved forward again.

He pinged the Crane BattleMech with his signal laser, an invitation to talk. The signal laser was a simple device, turning audio data into flashes of light, optic 1s and 0s that were assembled and turned back into text by the receiver. In so doing, it stripped away personality emotion and feeling, but did not require sender and receiver to trust one another to share a communications channel. He hoped his words would be enough.

SEND 1: FROM FWL CO TO FC COUNTERPART

2: RE FLOOD DANGER TO CIVILIANS

3: SUGGEST TRUCE TO RENDER AID STOP

Jack waited, watched the laser stutter and shut off, message completed. He waited. Under the guns of an entire BattleMech company. One word from the Crane, and they could probably blast his BattleMech to pieces in seconds. Would they trust him? Could he trust them?

An answering light began to wink from the _Falconer_. The communications display on Jack’s console began to fill the screen with glowing lines of text.

RECEIVED 1: FROM FC CO. TO FWL COUNTERPART

2: RE SUBJECTED PROPOSAL AGREED

3: SUGGEST DIVIDE INTO E/W ZONES STOP

4: AND THANK YOU STOP

A BattleMech was not build for construction work, but they did what they could, working through the day and into the night (marked only by the dim light growing even darker), using their great shovel hands to scoop up piles of earth to repair the river banks or to carry stranded civilians to higher ground. Other ’Mechs plunged into the raging torrent of the river, removing the downed trees and other debris clogging the riverbed. BattleMechs brought in emergency power generators for a hospital, carried and placed them on the higher floors, and helped lift the patients above the water level.

Finally, impossibly, the rain did slacken, the waters ceased rising, and faint dawn illuminated a crack of sky between the horizon and clouds. Jack rested the _Bandersnatch_ at the top of the river bank, watched the brown and foaming current rage impotently against the newly-raised barriers, before hurtling on, downstream, towards the sea.

When he looked up, the _Falconer_ was there, on the other side of the river. Its signal laser flashed.

R 5: WHAT NOW

Good question, Jack thought. Did they fight now? Try to kill those they had been working together with only moments before? Would they risk the destruction of the city they had fought so hard to save? It seemed so wasteful, so pointless now. It didn’t matter if his company won or lost; there were three full regiments on Callison against just one from the Federated Commonwealth, if he failed, someone else would succeed, and all that would change would be the names on the gravestones. He activated his own messaging laser.

S 4: BE ADVISED FWL HAS LANDED THREE REGIMENTS

S 5: IF YOU STAY HERE YOU WILL BE ENCIRCLED STOP

R 6: YOU WOULD SAY THAT

S 6: YOU HAVE MY WORD

R 7: THE WORD OF A SCORPION

Jack shut his teeth against a bitter retort. Trust was in short supply, especially between such old enemies, and one night of cooperation could not erase centuries of conflict.

S 7: NOT WORDS BUT DEEDS

S 8: MY ORDERS WERE TO FLOOD THE VALLEY

S 9: INSTEAD I AM HERE STOP

There was a moment when he thought the Falconer would fire, that all his words had been in vain. The Falconer raised its arms—only to bow, as he had once done, back on Devil’s Rock.

R 8: WE WITHDRAW THEN

R 9: FULL HONORS QUERY

S 10: FULL HONORS

S 11: AND THANK YOU STOP

_Montreux_

_Terra_

_Word of Blake Protectorate_

_6 June, 3063_

The Word of Blake Adept ushered them into a warmly-lit lounge, with a wide arc of floor-to-ceiling windows offering an impressive view of Lake Geneva. It was night time, and the dark and distant shore of the lake was dotted with a cozy, almost inviting string of soft lights.

The Lyran delegation had arrived first, and stood as the Free Worlders entered. The ambassador, a woman with high cheekbones and silver hair, extended her hand. “A pleasure, ambassador. I do so hope we can put behind us the misunderstandings over Arcadia, and continue the great tradition of mutual respect between our two realms.”

What tradition, Jack wondered to himself. The Lyrans and Free Worlds had been at each others’ throats for centuries. They were natural enemies, like scorpions and birds. More like, ‘The Lyran Alliance did so hope the Free Worlds would not intervene in the war erupting between the Lyran and Federated Suns halves of their realm.’

Personally, Jack did so hope he could have a drink. He wished he was wearing something more comfortable than his dress whites. He fought the urge to scratch at the collar. There was a single officer in uniform in the Lyran delegation, a woman perhaps his age, with short hair and fine, sharp features. She caught his gaze, nodded her head towards the two ambassadors and then slowly crossed her eyes. Jack smothered a smile, and settled for a fraction of a nod.

The Free Worlds ambassador introduced her entourage of aides and advisors and secretaries, ending with Jack. “Ah, yes,” she said at last, “this is my military attaché, Force Commander Jack Kopiona.”

Jack bowed slightly with a murmured “Ma’am.”

“A pleasure,” the Lyran ambassador said, face locked in the bland, polite pleasantness she had put on the moment the delegation had entered the room. The ambassador waved towards the uniformed woman. “Likewise, my advisor Kommandant Avian Sandhill.”

Jack wondered if he should salute or bow, and settled for offering his hand. Avian shook it with grave and solemn intensity that was betrayed by the light of mischief still dancing in her eyes. Jack found he was holding her hand for too long.

By the time he had recovered his wits and his hand, the two ambassadors had drifted away, already trying to outdo one another in insincere platitudes and patently false promises of future peace and cooperation.

“Seems they’ve left the two of us alone,” Jack remarked.

“Perhaps they’re hoping we’ll murder each other.”

“Well, much as I hate to disappoint, I don’t think I’m up to tackling anything with more fight in it than a gin and tonic.” He reached up and undid the top button of his uniform with a sigh of relief. His silver scorpion necklace glowed gently in the light.

The Lyran Kommandant, Avian, froze. Jack followed her gaze, and found she was staring at the necklace. “What a fascinating piece of jewelry, Force Commander Kopiona,” she said, and her voice sounded as though it were coming from far away. The merriment had quite left her eyes, replaced with something more serious, more somber.

“Oh, what, this?” Jack lifted it out of his collar so that she could see it more clearly. “Mm, I suppose. It’s my family crest, a scorpion.”

Avian smiled, but it was a tight and perfunctory thing, soon erased. “Indeed. A couple of years ago, I met a Free Worlds League MechWarrior, who bore the crest of a scorpion.” She held up a hand. A silver ring gleamed on her middle finger. “As for my own family crest, do you see this?”

Jack squinted a little, looked closer. “Looks like a bird.”

“It is, as you say, a bird. A crane, to be precise.”

“Ah,” he said, slowly. “Oh.”

“Indeed.”

“Callison?”

She nodded. “And Devil’s Rock, before that.”

Jack winced. “I hadn’t forgotten.”

They stood at the windows, side by side, faces reflected in the glass, superimposed on the distant, bright and hopeful lights of the far shore. The room was still filled with the murmur of voices, but there was a pool of silence between them, as black as the lake outside and a decade deep.

“It was ...” Jack drew a deep breath, and turned towards Avian, and she towards him. “It was a good thing, that we did. Wasn’t it? Terrible thing for a soldier to say, but it might be the one thing I’ve ever done in uniform I’ve ever felt proud of.”

She smiled and nodded. “It changed me, too. For the first time, I realized the person on the other side was. Well.”

“Human,” Jack supplied.

“More human than my own commanders, that’s for sure,” Avian agreed. “Once you become Colonel, everything becomes politics, keeping the generals and marshals happy rather than looking after your own men or the people you’re fighting for.”

“Let’s promise. Let’s never be like that.”

“Just like that?”

“Why not? We’ve proven we can do it. We can serve our realms, without losing our humanity.”

“Have you heard the tale of the Scorpion and the Frog?” The seriousness was still there, but something of her earlier teasing playfulness crept back into her voice. “There’s a flooded river, and a scorpion tries to convince a frog to carry him across. The frog is reluctant, knowing how dangerous scorpions are. Don’t be silly, reassures the scorpion, for if I sting you then I will drown, too. So the frog agrees but sure enough, halfway across the scorpion stings the frog. Before it dies, the frog asks, why did you do that, for now you’ve doomed us both. The scorpion replies, because it’s in my nature.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that story a couple of times. Couple thousand times, that is,” Jack said, ruefully. “I only know one story about cranes. There’s a poor farmer, and one day he rescues a crane that’s been shot by hunters. That night, a beautiful woman appears at his door and asks to be his wife. Each night, the wife shuts herself in a room and makes the husband promise not to open the door. Each morning she produces a beautiful length of cloth, which the farmer sells and so they’re no longer poor. But one night, the farmer’s curiosity gets the better of him, and he peeks inside the door. He sees that his wife is actually the crane, weaving cloth from her feathers. The crane sees the farmer, and says that because he didn’t trust her and broke his promise, they can never be together, and she flies away.”

“One that can’t change, one that can’t forgive,” Avian sighed. “Not very reassuring stories, are they?”

“Just stories,” Jack shrugged. “So come on. Let me prove to you a scorpion can change his spots.”

“That’s leopards.”

“Alright then, that a scorpion can keep a promise.” Jack reached around the back of his neck and unclasped his necklace, and held it out towards her. “Here, take this, as a token of my vow: If ever we find ourselves on opposite sides again, we won’t fight. We’ll find a reasonable, sensible, humane solution. We’ll make a little corner of sanity in this big old galaxy of crazy.”

Avian nodded, and twisted off her ring. “Probably too small for you,” she said, apologetic.

“I’ll put it on a chain, wear it like this necklace.” He reached forward. “Here, let me help you put it on.”

Her skin was soft beneath his fingers, and he found her face very close. There was laughter in her eyes. “Promise it won’t sting?” she whispered.

_Earhardt City_

_Wyatt_

_Lyran Alliance (Bolan/Skye breakaway provinces)_

_1 September, 3068_

Somehow, he’d known it would be Avian. Known that his empty promise, heedlessly made in the warm night, the heat of her skin under his fingers, would grow cold and hard and come back to demand its fulfillment. A debt his past self had taken on in simpler times, trusting his future self to pay back.

And now, payment was due. If he was going to keep that promise. Colonel Jack Kopiona rubbed his temples with both hands. She was here, on Wyatt. And things were not so simple now. Marshal Brett wanted Wyatt taken, of course, but he also wanted the rogue units from Bolan and Skye punished. They had to be given a bloody nose, to prove the League could defend itself and to deter any future military adventurism. Maybe Avian thought she was following the chain of command, being a good soldier and obeying orders, but to the League she was a dangerous, unpredictable threat that had to be neutralized.

Even if he could convince Avian to pull back Jack couldn’t just let her regiment ... get away, without firing a shot. There had to be consequences for attacking the League.

He let them see his BattleMech, get a good look at its specification, at its markings and the scorpion crest. Let Avian know it was him, before he opened a channel. He hoped she would trust him that much, at least. Let him talk to her face-to-face instead of the blinking Morse code they’d used on Callison. Yes, face-to-face. He owed her that much.

The communications panel flickered to life, displaying the sender in a tiny window to one side.

“Avian,” Jack said, simply.

“Jack.”

“You look good,” he told the tiny, blurry image of her face, or at least what he could see of it behind her visor, a rectangular window of humanity amid the grey of her neurohelmet.

She snorted. “Right. So. What do we do about this?”

“It’s just like Callison. You can’t win, Avian. Do what’s best for your men, for the people of Wyatt.”

“Parole?” she suggested. “Same terms as before. You’ll allow us to withdraw, with full honors?”

Jack bowed his head a moment. Forgive me, he thought. “Can’t do that, Avian,” he said, and looked up. “I’m afraid I have to ask for ... demand your surrender. I promise you and your men will be well treated. Might have to make examples of one or two but, you know, it’s better than the alternative. When this is over you might be repatriated ... It’s either that, or we open fire.”

“This is your human solution?” Avian asked, voice almost a whisper. “You know I can’t. Jack, you promised.”

“Unity, Avian, what are you people even doing? Two district commands go completely crazy and attack the League, and you’re blaming _me_ for not finding a peaceful solution?”

“I was following orders.”

“So am I.”

She looked at him sadly. There were lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there five years before, cares and worries that had traced their lines across her face. “Then I guess we have to fight.”

“Listen, Avian, the League has 50 kiloton nukes ready to fire,” Jack pressed. “Cobalt-laced. They’ll wipe out the city. They’ll kill the planet rather than let you keep it, Avian.”

“They? I thought _you_ were in command, Colonel Kopiona,” she retorted. “A nuke? This is your corner of sanity? Unity. You promised, Jack.”

“So did you,” he fired back, then tried to fight down his rising tide of anger. Why would see not see reason? Why was she being so damn stubborn? He was a Colonel now, he had responsibilities. He couldn’t just abandon the mission for friendship’s sake. “Look, I know, but you know, that’s the nature of the system, that’s the machine we’re both strapped into. I’m just one guy, can’t make it all better.”

“No,” she sighed. “You can’t change your nature.”

“Forgive me,” he said, out loud.

“No,” she said, and closed the channel.


End file.
